"Was getting a bit carried away with watching my progress on the gps tonight and was rudely interrupted when a flying fish hit me, er, in the bum! It was not a small one either, and rather startling to be hit without warning in the dark of the night. Perhaps it was a sign to slow down, stop and smell the roses. Or fish, or whatever."

That's 22-year-old Katie Spotz, writing yesterday on the blog she's keeping while trying to become the youngest person in history to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean. Today is the 41st day of her trip.

Spotz, who is apparently physically fit, has previously bicycled 3,300 miles across the U.S. and was the first person to swim the full 352 miles of the Allegheny River through Pennsylvania and New York State. She has a super-tech high, 19-foot rowboat equipped with two solar panels that generate electricity for her VHF radio, GPS, navigation lights and a gizmo that sends Spotz's coordinates to nearby ships and alerts her if those ships get dangerously close. She brought an iPod (a favorite song is Men at Work's "Down Under") and a laptop computer to track weather and blog, and uses a satellite phone to update her Twitter account.

This kind of thing always strikes me as cheating, kind of. Or at least violating the spirit of a solo rowing trip across an ocean, which should be more like The Old Man And The Sea. Or this:

But she's doing it for a good cause: raising awareness of, and money for, the billion people around the world who don't have access to clean drinking water. So more power to her.

And Spotz-who left off from Dakar, Senegal in December, and is aiming to complete the 2,500 mile trip to Cayenne, French Guiana late next month-has had some adventures. On January 31st, she was about to swim under her boat to check the hull for barnacles or slime build up. But then, as she writes,

I grabbed my snorkel, mask, and scrubber and took a quick look into the water. I started to dangle my toes in the water but something did not feel quite right. Another glimpse and ... there it was. It was deep in the water but looked too big to be a fish yet too small to be a shark. Either way, it certainly did not look friendly with green spikes. So, I crawled my way back into the boat and decided to keep my mantra: "just keep rowing."

(It turned out to be a tuna.)

Spotz desalinates ocean water to drink and eats 5000 calories a day from her food supply, which consists of:

300 Clif bars (lots of different flavors)
210 dehydrated lunches/dinners
98 dehydrated breakfast meals
90 Snickers bars
80 Bumble bars
70 trail mix bags (small)
50 Twix, Butterfinger, and Hersheys bars
42 dehydrated desserts (cheesecake or chocolate pudding)
40 salmon or tuna packs
18 bags dried mango (plain and spicy)
12 bags of beef or turkey jerky
7 bags of dried plantains
8 bags almonds
12 bags cashews
5 bags dried cherries
6 bags wasabi peas
8 hard bread packs with almond butter
12 bags of crackers
10 bags dried pears
10 bags of mission fig and calamyrna figs
8 bags of dried peas
7 boxes of biscotti
30 sunflower packs (small)
200 GU Energy gels
100 GU Blocks
7 bags dried blueberries
40 gummies bags
50 fruit leathers
6 bags of flattened banana
4 bags of mangosteen
12 packs of chocolate covered ginger
4 bags of tangy almonds
3 bags of whey protein
2 packs of Fig Newtons
6 bags of sesame crepes
2 chocolate cookies bags
Nuun electrolyte replacement tablets
1 sprouting kit with lots of seeds!